


Sun Coming Up Diffuse

by summerstorm



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Anonymity, Community: kink_bingo, Consent Issues, Dubious Consent, Exhibitionism, Other, Power Imbalance, Watersports
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-15
Updated: 2011-09-15
Packaged: 2017-10-23 18:19:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/253438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerstorm/pseuds/summerstorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A crosses the line into sexual harassment, and Spencer has trouble not giving in to their requests.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sun Coming Up Diffuse

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the watersports square on my kink-bingo card. Also contains: heavy consent issues (I wouldn't call this outright non-con, but it is highly dubious consent and could be read as non-consensual), exposure, a D/s-like dynamic with a dom that stays anonymous—and anonymity kink, on a certain level.

The air conditioning shuts off minutes after Spencer's bedroom door is somehow locked from the outside, by means she can't make sense of and isn't trying to. She could sneak out through the window, if she wanted to. She could yell, she could call someone; her cell still has a signal, since that's how she's communicating with the person responsible for this in the first place, whoever it is. Spencer barely wants to know that either.

It's the middle of July, it's sweltering outside, and Spencer's wearing dress pants and a long-sleeved white shirt. She feels her skin break into a sweat before it's even hot in her room, the fabric sticking to her stomach, her bra uncomfortable with dampness pooling under her breasts. After a while, she sits down on the edge of her desk — the linen on her bed would just make her legs warmer at the contact — and draws a lock of hair behind her ear, grimacing when she feels sweat even there, strands of long hair kissing the hot skin of her neck. She rolls her sleeves up to her elbows and looks around.

Nothing.

It's been nothing for thirty minutes now, if the clocks in her room are to be believed, if A's not messing with them too. _What am I doing_ , she asks herself, not for the first time tonight, not for the first time this _month_. When A started doing this — they started with Aria, so Spencer was outraged, there was nothing else she could be. Aria had gone through a week of harassment before she decided to tell them — her _friends_ , who were in this with her in a way nobody else was; they were supposed to tell each other _everything_ , everything about A and Alison, everything they knew, and here A had found something Aria would be too embarrassed to talk about. Spencer never got the full story, but she damn well knew that no friend of hers was going to do anything she didn't want to do just because some asshole who was too cowardly to own their actions tried to play off her sexual frustration.

And Aria hadn't wanted to do it. At first, maybe; Spencer was almost sure one of A's requests for Aria were that she show up in Ezra's office and unzip her hoodie to reveal nothing underneath, and another that she show up on _Jason's_ doorstep in a see-through shirt and wait for his sprinklers to go off before ringing the bell. But there had been skinny dipping in the swimming pool just before swim practice, and the thing that made Aria buckle down and say, "I should have told you guys sooner, but I've been getting these texts," and swallow like she was pushing lead out her throat instead of words.

Spencer had said, "Okay, this is ending _right now_ ," and Aria had said, "How? What are you going to do? We don't even know who this is," and Spencer had said, firmly, leaving no room for argument: "You're just not going to do it."

There was no specific blackmail going on: only the general threat that A had shit on all of them and could come out with it easily, and was capable of worse things. But they only had one thing on Aria; surely A wasn't going to lose her only leverage on some kind of perverted sex game, especially after having gotten to play it on Aria for a week. That had to be enough.

It was the first time they'd left something hang unfinished with A. Nothing happened, no retaliation, not even any complaints or acknowledgment of Aria's refusal. It stopped. And Spencer was fairly certain that was enough for Aria, enough for Hanna and Emily to stop worrying, too.

For Spencer, it felt like a weakly hung chandelier looming over her head. Another one to add to the collection. Her entire life was a minefield now; it didn't make a difference to add a machete to the weapon drawer, not when there were already sniper rifles and shit in there.

And then Spencer went to see Toby, to apologize, and just before she knocked on his door she got a text from A. And Spencer felt horrible and forced, and that was all normal, but she also felt horribly _grateful_ , all at the same time, because here it was: here was her excuse to get more out of Toby than a conversation. An excuse to do something she'd regret but she desperately wanted to do. So when he let her in, when he told her Jenna wasn't home, Spencer didn't think twice about it: she said, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I didn't trust you," and she said, "Let me make it up to you," and when she went to her knees he spluttered a bit but then he just blurted out, "Holy crap, Spencer," and cooperated.

Like he was ever going to do anything else.

Then there was the time she drove Emily to the hospital and, while Emily was with the doctor, Spencer got a text telling her to sneak into an on-call room half a hallway away from the waiting room she was sitting in. Wren was there. Wren was there, and his break had five minutes left on it, so even if the text A had sent hadn't included the words _all your clothes stay on_ , they would have. All they did was make out.

Which was still a terrible message to send Wren; Spencer wanted nothing with him, nothing serious at least. He needed to grow up a bit before he became boyfriend material. But it had been fun; it had been what Spencer wanted to do.

And then there were the things Spencer didn't know she wanted to do; the things that involved no one but her, and A on the other end of the line. First it was just being provocative: undoing a few buttons of her shirt for a waiter, dropping her bag and sticking her ass out to pick it up during one of the GSA meetings Emily had asked them to go to in an attempt to make friends with Samara, flashing a bartender, once she'd gone out clubbing by herself in Philly.

She'd almost gone home with a guy that night. She'd thought that was what A wanted, but at the last minute a set of keys had dropped into her lap, and she'd found a car waiting outside for her, with instructions inside. She had a hotel room, and she'd driven to it in a strange car, feeling like someone was watching her, naked from the waist down.

Her seat was wet when she got to the hotel, and she didn't bother cleaning it up. She hadn't been asked; it wasn't part of the game to assume instructions, and it wasn't part of Spencer's game to pretend she wasn't getting off on it, as dirty as she felt about it in the morning.

The hilarious, most absolutely awful part was, she felt bad for not feeling worse. For not feeling hassled. Sure, A wasn't blackmailing her specifically either, and she could have done what she told Aria to do: refuse to listen to A's requests. But she was still in a horrible situation, she was scared, she was being ordered around by someone who'd hurt and kidnapped and probably even killed before. She was being taken advantage of, and she knew it, and she _thought_ she could say no if she wanted to, but she also knew she hadn't tried, and it may not be so easy if she did.

Now — now Spencer is in her big, empty bedroom, in her big, empty house while her family attends to various affairs and, in Melissa's case, tries out yet another resort. Hanna may drop by tomorrow, but Spencer's alone for the remainder of the evening, night, morning. It feels like a lie to say there's someone around; there is a shadow, an anonymous shadow that locked Spencer's door and turned off the AC and has left Spencer sweating in her room with the very, very soft breeze lifting up as the night darkens for company.

She reaches for the bottled water in her drawer. It's warm, but it's better than a dry mouth. She still doesn't know what she's doing. The last text she got from A said, `Go to your room`, and she hasn't heard from anyone since.

The mirror returns a scowl and a doubled sense of anxiety. _What is she doing?_ She doesn't give in. She's a Hastings. Hastings are proud and stubborn, and Spencer Hastings sure as hell doesn't just roll over for psychopaths she _doesn't even know_ because it makes her wet.

Boy, if A thought they had it good with Aria because of the whole celibacy thing with Ezra, the way Spencer's reacting to all of it must feel like they've hit the jackpot.

The bell from the church strikes ten and Spencer startles, nearly knocking over the mirror. "What the fuck are you doing," she mutters to her reflection, this time out loud, and her cellphone rings.

`Aren't you just melting down`, the text says. "No shit," Spencer says out loud. `Why don't you get rid of those dress pants? They can't possibly be comfortable`. She looks around, her thumb already on the button, and takes the pants off quickly, folding them and leaving them on a chair. Her legs are damp, uncomfortably so with the soft sheen of sweat cooling down on the back of her knees, the top of her thighs.

A shiver runs up the small of her back, and she presses her thighs together, and she suddenly realizes she's drunk a small bottled water since she got locked in here, and she can't remember the last time she went to the bathroom before that, and now she's locked in here.

"Shit," she says, and tries not to let it show. She's fine. Tense, a little, but her body hasn't really processed it all yet. She just needs to get through this, and she's far gone enough that the need to pee is just registering as arousal.

She flattens her palms against her hips and stands in the middle of her room, the spot the wind first hits as it comes obliquely through the window. The back of her neck feels cold now, outright uncomfortably cold, but it'll calm down. It's still better than feeling like her shirt is melding into her skin.

`You should show your legs off more`, the next text says. Out loud, Spencer cheekily answers, "I already do." It's a weird way to have a conversation. It's like communicating with a god, only this is a god that texts her back, and sometimes acknowledges her prayers.

That she doesn't say out loud; A already has enough omnipresence issues as it is. Spencer would call them delusions of grandeur, but clearly it's working for them.

`You should show your tits off more`, another text says, and Spencer snorts into the silent room. Her phone beeps again. `The shirt can stay, it says, just let them out to play`. Now A's rhyming. God, this is so tacky. And it's outrageous that Spencer's chest puffs out before she thinks of it. So maybe she's a little attention-deprived. A lot attention-deprived. Whatever. She leaves the bottom two buttons of her shirt hooked in and, not without some difficulty, slides her bra off through her sleeve.

Her nipples pebble out in the cool air, and her thighs start twitching.

This is fantastic, just fantastic, she thinks sarcastically, and ruefully recognizes the part of these proceedings where her disbelief and guilt towards herself and her sex drive all go into overdrive and she simultaneously finds herself on the brink of a first, soft, half orgasm and on the brink of kicking the door down or similar and storming out of this game.

She brushes her thumbs along her nipples instead, a teasing ghost of a touch, and shivers, biting her lip to keep from whimpering. The pressure's only building between her legs now; she clamps a hand over her knee and drags in a deep breath. It's fine. She's still aware enough, she's — she's fine. She shakes out her legs and runs clammy hands through her hair, feeling her stomach heave at the feeling of exposure. A is watching her somehow; they could be just pretending, being vague and hoping Spencer doesn't notice, but their track record — the bugs, the interferences — makes that hard to believe. A is watching Spencer and Spencer's putting on a show, like A deserves that, like it's even what A wants; everything they've done so far was about power, so it would probably be more satisfying for them if Spencer cowered into a corner and looked frightened.

Of course, if Spencer truly were frightened, she wouldn't cooperate in the first place. She's sure A's delighted Spencer's a freak. And Spencer's usually proud to be a freak, don't get her wrong, but there's 'unusual' and then there's 'desperately waiting for an anonymous text to tell her she can stick her hand down the front of her panties.' Subtle difference, but it's there.

A lock clicks, and a minute later her phone buzzes in her hand. `Come out, come out of your little hiding place`, it says, and Spencer looks around, concerned. Her head is playing a loop of _I'm naked and there's someone in my house, I'm naked and there's someone in my house_ even as she walks towards the door, turns the knob, steps out.

The hallway is as silent as it has to be with ostensibly no one around, but there has to be someone; Spencer would chalk up A's knowledge of what's happening to hidden cameras, but the door-locking, the horrible heat permeating Spencer's living space — someone has to have been in her house. Someone might still be here, and as she makes her way down the stairs, Spencer starts to become warier, scared. She doesn't think A would just come out of the shadows — they'd reveal themselves, for one, but mostly because it would be a breach of protocol. It's not that — it's not like they've signed up a contract with A, or anything, but the unspoken deal is that A spies on them and doesn't out them; A interferes in their lives but doesn't get their hands dirty.

Of course, A hit Hanna with a car, and gave Emily a massage. Spencer has good reason to be scared. A doesn't usually pull that kind of shit when they cooperate, but that doesn't mean they can't start now.

A part of her tells her to go back to her room; she felt safer there, after all. She did, and if that's logical, then logic means something very different from what Spencer's believed all her life.

There's a note stuck to the backdoor; it says, in block letters, `Follow the yellow brick road`. When Spencer opens the door, she sees no brick, but she does see a yellow path: mismatched gloves and scarves trailing off to the barn. "Convenient," she says; she feels like she should give A credit for coming up with a way to send Spencer walking naked right under the sky and yet giving her a place to hide at the end of her pilgrimage.

It's still a struggle to make it out of the door. She thinks about it, about putting it off — she could take a step back, she still could use a trip to the bathroom. Her phone beeps: `No rest stops`, and that gives Spencer the last push she needs to set bare feet on the path outside her house.

The ground is cool, and it's pretty dark out; she leaves the light on in the kitchen for guidance, and hopes the barn isn't locked. She took the key out of her keychain when Melissa moved in there, and she has no idea where she left it.

Goosebumps spread over her breasts, her legs. She concentrates on where she's putting her feet; last thing she was is cutting herself on some branch or something and having a reminder of what she's allowing herself to be put through in the form of pain any time she tries to walk. The path is pretty clear from a certain point on, though, and then she has trouble not thinking about where she is coupled with her state of undress. It's not that hard to get to this side of the house; if anyone tried to check up on her — her friends, or Toby or Wren, or if Jenna paid her another visit, _anyone_ — they could spot her like this, _watch her_ like this.

It would make a difference, if she knew the person observing her. She could — she realizes A being anonymous doesn't mean they're a stranger, but it's easier to pretend; she doesn't have to face A, not as such. She doesn't have to give explanations. Maybe that's the appeal of this; A started it so Spencer didn't have to. A orders her around so Spencer can pretend her actions aren't tailored to her. A gets a power trip, and Spencer gets — Spencer gets off, and a truckload of guilt along with it.

The barn is locked.

Shit.

She turns around and leans back against the door, letting her knees bend a little and her hair get ridiculously messed up. Will hardly hurt matters at all. She just stands there and breathes for a while, covering her chest with an arm and staring aimlessly at her phone.

It lights up, and she scrambles to read the new text. `That seems like a good place to hide your underwear`, it says, and Spencer's eyes widen. She doesn't respond out loud, this time; she's more concerned about the possibility of someone else overhearing. If she could, she'd ask what A means: just take them off? Leave them out here? _Bury_ them? Her phone beeps again. ` Spencer Hastings can't make a decision? How disappointing`.

Spencer curses under her breath and hooks her thumbs into the waistband of her panties. She looks around again, but all she can see is trees and fences and dirt and so many places to hide. Closing her eyes for a moment, she drags her underwear down to her knees, letting them fall the rest of the way to the ground, and presses her hand between her legs. To cover herself or to touch, she doesn't even know. Once it's there, it's hard not to rub her fingers against herself — careful in case A asks her to stop, shallow, but it does feel good.

At least until her phone beeps again.

Her hand retreats instinctively to her hip, and she wets her lips as she accesses the text: `An academic like you should know there weren't always private bathrooms`, and a second one: `The next stop is your room, and you'll be punished for any detours`.

Is—is A suggesting she should pee in the woods? Is that what they're going for now? Spencer's not going to—she can hold it in, she's fine, except now she's thinking about it, and that never ends well. Is this an order or is it a suggestion? It seems too subtle to be an order. It feels like more of an ultimatum, _do this now or_ — or what? Even if she's locked in her room again — even then, that doesn't mean she'll be locked in there all night. A will let her out.

Right?

Another text: `Do you have all night? I don't.`

She can't. She's trusting A. That's the best choice here. She forces herself to stand upright and shudders at the sudden rush of wind across her chest. Her shirt is cold and uncomfortable and _useless_ , but she can't take it off or button it up or wrap it around her hips because she hasn't been told to. She looks down at herself, her skin gleaming in what little light the stars provide at this hour, the soft hair between her legs glistening with the wetness she spread when she touched herself.

This is really getting to be a problem, she thinks, and then she laughs, breathlessly, because it _already is_ , and the way she can just ignore that is another problem in itself. Maybe she should have continued going to therapy. Maybe that would have helped.

She chuckles again, silently this time; she feels a little less irrational now, less intellectually numb. She doesn't even know if that's a good or a bad thing, but she can't just choose to feel differently. Stepping away from the barn, she notices most of the stuff laid out as a trail for her is gone, and then the light in her kitchen flickers off.

She should have seen that one coming.

It's not so dark outside that she can't make her way back, but it's dark enough that she feels less exposed now, completely irrationally — always irrational, that's what this stupid game is. She runs a hand over her face, presses her legs together and breathes into her fist, closing her eyes to think. If A knows how Spencer feels right now, they probably will keep her locked up until she tries to sleep and wets her bed or has to find to pee into. Would that be more or less embarrassing than getting that over with here, where she can at least pretend it's too dark for anyone to see?

She takes a couple of steps off the path, and stops. Maybe that's not what A wants. She can't ask, though, so there's no reason to wait for instructions, no reason to stop. Why did she stop, then? She's not going against any rules. She's not. She just has to make a decision, and for some reason it feels like a big deal that she not take the easy way out. But what the hell is the easy way out?

Fuck. She just needs to say screw it and go back home, or she needs to say screw it and stop holding it in. It's getting uncomfortable, and it's hard to walk like this, and maybe if she tries she'll just have, like, performance anxiety from being watched and that will make her decision for her.

She breathes in deep, and out, and in and out again, and shuffles her feet away from each other. She could crouch. She probably should, but she's so tense. She just needs to stop clenching and let go.

The first stream splashes hot against her knee, just once, and she has to lean forward and hold herself up on her thighs to keep from losing balance. This is having the opposite effect she expected on her; she's even more turned on now, and it doesn't help that there is some anxiety and she has to clench and unclench her muscles over and over. She reaches a hand between her legs, spreading herself out, moving her fingers aside so she won't get them wet — at least not with urine.

It takes a while, and A doesn't bother her, which is both nice and kind of frustrating. For all Spencer knows, they could be trying to sneak up on her while she's distracted. And yeah, that would just about fuck her up for good. The thought of someone walking up unnoticed and suddenly grabbing her hips from behind, or working fingers inside her — she brushes her clit with her fingers and tries to hold back, she does, but she can't.

She's too turned on to be able to tell if her bladder's even empty, too tense, and once she stops trying it only takes a few seconds for an orgasm to make its way through her. A strangled groan leaves her throat, and she covers her mouth with her hand, shutting her eyes tight as she strokes herself through the waves and the aftershocks and on, sensitive now but not enough not to push through it. If A's not done, Spencer doesn't want to be, and she knows she'll just feel terrible on the way back to her room if she lets herself cool down.

Warily assessing her surroundings again, she starts walking back towards the house. Her legs are shaky, and her hands itch to cover herself, but she'd feel even more awkward walking like that. She still tries — when she bends down to pick a twig out of her toes, when she first walks back into her kitchen, every time she looks back as she walks up the stairs.

`Stand by the window`, a text says when Spencer walks into her room, but it doesn't say anything about doors, so she leaves hers open. And by the window doesn't mean in front of it, so she stands to the side, peeking out of the curtain. She considers closing the blinds, but then A probably wouldn't have asked her to do this if they were okay with that.

Silence, again. Last time it took A over half an hour to give Spencer any instructions, and she starts worrying that's what they're going for now, too. Drag it out until Spencer loses it. It doesn't exactly sound unlike A.

Okay. Well. It's not like she has to wait for instructions. She drags a hand down her stomach, along the inside of her thigh to her knee and back up, deviating at her hipbone. She could just go for it. She could. She doesn't know why she's holding out for someone else to give her a green light.

But she is.

She undoes one of the two closed buttons in her shirt and holds one of her breasts in her hand, then the other, squeezing softly, dragging her knuckles over her nipples. She's so slick she can feel it on her thighs now, and she tries to remind herself that she left a pair of soaked-through panties near the barn, that she should get them before she goes to sleep, or early tomorrow morning.

That is, if A hasn't done away with them.

She groans deep in her throat, and finally her cell lights up again. `Good job not losing me`, it says, and Spencer can't tell if A's referring to themselves or personifying the phone. `Go ahead and get yourself off. You've earned your treat`.

Spencer sighs loud and starts touching herself right away, next to the window. She stands in front of it for a second, bracing herself with her forearm on the frame, and then forces herself to move to her bed. She falls back on it with her legs dangling off the edge and takes the easy approach, just steady fingers stroking circles on her clit until the sweat pooling on her stomach is hot and new and her legs start shaking, anticipating an orgasm even more intense than before, waves of pleasure making her hips jerk until she can't move anymore and all she can feel is relief.

She drags herself under the sheets as soon as she's able to move, and waits for regret and hatred to kick in. She's too exhausted to manage that kind of intensity, though; all that rises in her chest is a vague resentment, some guilt, very little shame. She's not the one who should apologize for this, she reminds herself. She's not the one who started it; she's not the one who has the upper hand. She's the one who has no idea what A would do if she stopped. That's the problem. Spencer's not hurting anyone; she's just letting her sex drive choose her priorities.

She still—she still feels a little dirty, after, every time, not just physically, but she doesn't trust what A would do if Spencer tried to date again. This is the only sex life Spencer can manage that won't hurt anybody but her. All her options are risky. A's made it that way.

Her phone beeps again, and she fishes it from the floor by the foot of her bed. Another text, another unknown number.

`You're a lot more desperate than Aria ever was`, it says, and in the cold light of not being horny as hell anymore, Spencer cringes at herself, burrows deeper into her sheets. `Maybe you guys should help each other out`, the text ends. It sounds wistful to Spencer's exhausted brain. Hopeful instead of like a warning, except that this is A, so it has to be a warning. It's definitely something Spencer should worry about. She didn't pull Aria out of this just so she could drag her back into it.

Her phone beeps again. This time, all it says is, `Good night`.

"Fuck you," she says out loud, and then, softer, "night."


End file.
